


but my mind is tangled between your little flaws

by buries



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Speculation, rbficexchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-16 19:46:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4637958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buries/pseuds/buries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>once upon a time, there was a girl with a broken leg. except that's not really the story at all.</i> or the one where bellamy and raven tell their own story.</p><p>written for akzseinga for the rbficexchange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but my mind is tangled between your little flaws

**Author's Note:**

  * For [akzseinga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akzseinga/gifts).



> this is written for **akzseinga** for the bellamy/raven fic exchange! i combined two prompts together inadvertently (one where it's an off-screen moment and the other of bellamy being there for raven when she needs him). all i wanted to do was write a fic of them using radios to talk to one another, instead i ended up with this mess.
> 
> this is set in season three, clearly speculative, somewhere in the future, and an au since this seriously won't even happen. title is from the neighbourhood's _flawless_. this is unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine. ♥

Once upon a time, there was a girl with a broken leg —

— Except that's not really the story at all.

*

Raven doesn't believe in fairytales. 

The stories she'd been lucky enough to hear as a kid had been so whimsical and romantic, painting dashing heroes and pretty damsels as the only good people in the world. Her mother had favoured them once, before Mrs Collins had taken to painting stories of women who remained in their towers and refused to unravel their hair for the sole purpose for a man to climb it. "What reason do they have to put their weight on us?" she'd said, and though Finn would fall asleep during the stories, Raven had remained attentive and fixated on these figures. She used to say, "They don't." The ones she remembers are vague, intangible like the ghost of a mother she thinks she must have made up to cure her lonely nights.

She doesn't think he does, either. Whenever she looks at him, across her worktable, across the table he eats at with Octavia and invites her to sit beside his sister and engage in a conversation that's always at his expense, she doubts Bellamy really believes in fairytales.

They'd travelled to a bunker, a short ways away from Camp Jaha, and had found a trunk of books. Some were falling apart, missing pages, even sections, and others were covered in mould, bitten by snails, and even drenched in blood. The rare few were pristine, and those are the ones she knows Bellamy's given to Octavia to read, as if his sister deserves to hold yet another title as the first person to read the classics they had thought was lost to a nuclear apocalypse.

She remembers the day like it had been yesterday. Sometimes, she's convinced it had been. He'd fought tooth and nail, voice breaking in his own rough bark, for her to tag along, despite her leg slowing them down and stretching what should've been a thirty minute walk into four long hours.

She doubts he had even minded. He'd stayed by her side for the entire journey, refusing to lead, refraining from bringing up the rear, quiet in his own jests of why he was staying by her side.

The bunker had been built into a mountain, kind of like the entrance to Mount Weather. There were no reapers there, she remembers. There had been no one. No Cerberus, no Ladon, no sea monster. She remembers walking in, like she was Heracles, and walking out with golden apples in her hands.

Raven doesn't believe in fairytales. She likes to think she believes in the story he's weaving now, of Hades and Persephone, of a love that hadn't quite begun in a manner she likes at all but had seen a young maiden blossom into a woman and an aged and cruel man soften in his heart.

She watches his face, taking note of how his features brighten up when he leans forward on his arms to speak to Octavia. His sister has heard this story a million times before, but she interjects, like it's some sort of song and dance between them. Like it's some tradition Raven's allowed to sit in on and observe.

She's the only one out of all of them, Jasper, Monty, Harper, and Miller, who even pays attention, riveted by them like she had been once my Mrs Collins' stories.

Raven doesn't notice that she's even smiling until Bellamy thinks to say, when he's walking her back to her workstation, that it's nice to see her not look so doom and gloomy.

"At least Monty won't have a reason to be scared anymore," he quips. She punches him in the shoulder for that one.

*

In the stories, in most of them, aside from some of Bellamy's favourites, they never take note, nor even mention, the very moment the heroine gives up.

Raven knows Bellamy's written it down, the very day, the exact time, right down to the very second, the moment she had resigned herself to sitting at her workbench all day.

She remembers. It'd been after their trip to that bunker, the library hidden in a mountain, waiting for Bellamy Blake to find it. She remembers overhearing Kane talking to Abby about her leg, of how she's a liability, a girl who should remain at her desk all day, making gadgets and fixing problems he's too dumb to fix.

She knows he does. He no longer asks her if she wants to sneak outside the broken Ark and lie on the grass to stare up at the stars. She's thankful for it, though. She doesn't know how many more times she can refuse.

*

A witch tries to shove a child into an oven, but Raven thinks it's all wrong. The witch in her story is simply an adult, a council member who thinks herself to be better and knowledgeable of the child's capabilities.

"You should rest," Abby says, over and over, for days and weeks and months on end. Raven sits on the edge of the medical bed with her head bowed and her jaw tense. She's never happy. She thinks, if Abby even tried to reach out and touch her, her fingers would slice at her as deeply as a scalpel does to flesh. "You shouldn't be straining your leg."

But Raven doesn't need her leg to mend radios. She doesn't need her leg to create different devices for communication. She doesn't need her leg at all.

They don't need her, is all she ever hears, as she watches as Wick is tasked with all of _her_ projects. Kyle Wick creates a radio. Kyle Wick fixes a stun gun. Kyle Wick can't create bullets without a guide or her hovering above him.

She doesn't hover. She lets herself be scooped up in the mouth of Cerberus as she rummages through his things and tries to read him some story for the sole purpose of keeping busy. Maybe it's spiteful of her to remain far from where Wick can find her, but Raven knows she's no one's assistant, no one's sidekick, no steed that lets another ride on her coattails and take all the glory for such a treacherous journey they hadn't broken a sweat on.

A witch tries to shove a little girl into an oven, but the boy who had presented her his chicken bone as a limb comes in and saves her with a radio instead.

*

The radio he gives her is broken, fried beyond repair, like it's been crushed beneath the weight of the world. Or thrown into an electrical river.

Of course, she fixes it. She's bored. She's talented. She's a damn genius. She doesn't do it for him.

But when she asks him why he had brought her the very first radio anyone has tasked her with fixing, she hesitates on wanting to remain standing tall.

"We think there's more crap out there," he says. He looks at her, standing in her workstation, but Raven doesn't think he really sees her. She knows when he's looking at her. Sometimes his stare is so hot she thinks she's going to burn like the Grounders did back at their first home base.

She sits on her stool and remains still. He stands, unmoving, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. 

"Like food, bullets, guns, maybe even answers," he shrugs.

"Do you really believe that?" she arches her brow. She knows his answer already. She knows he'd pushed himself to the very front of the line when it came to the guard members who were leaving on this stupid expedition for Clarke.

He doesn't believe there's an answer at all. But he knows there's a whip out there he can flog himself with. And he eagerly leaps at it.

He feels responsible, for some reason, for a choice Clarke Griffin had made on her own. Raven hates him for it in that very moment.

"They found bullets in the bunker." She knows this. He's told her this before, as if she's some sort of person he can confess to and rid himself of all his sins. She's forgiven him for transgressions she had never held against him. But Bellamy's so hellbent on being his own judge, jury, and executioner he refuses to peer at her evidence when she tells him he's _wrong_. 

His voice is quieter, like he's confessing again, and she's so tempted to leap to her feet, regardless of her bad leg, and shove her hand firmly against is mouth. "More of them. If I hadn't been distracted with trying to leave camp, we would've had more bullets," he says. He's not looking at her this time.

Her gaze is unwaveringly set on him. Maybe her eyes can burn holes into him as an act of revenge for the moments he had scorched her. 

She thinks to tell him it's not his fault she got shot. She thinks to tell him it's not his fault they didn't have enough bullets. She thinks to tell him he did good, either way. She thinks to tell him he'd given her something to do, a task to keep her busy, a purpose that can't be thieved away from her by Kyle Wick.

She opts to not say anything at all.

"You're leaving."

It's his turn to choose to say nothing.

Raven doesn't know why it hits her hard, like a punch to the gut, like a blade slicing her skin one thousand and one times. But it does. It keeps her quiet, restrains her voice, and pulls her gaze down.

"Well," she sighs, after a moment. She spins on his stool, liking that she had fixed it to accommodate his usual restlessness. It crawls up her spine now, over the broken notch to settle its hands at the nape of her neck. "It's a good thing you came to the right genius."

She doesn't look at him. 

She knows in the tales, in the ones he doesn't really recite, that the girl always looks at the boy like he hung the moon. But Raven doesn't want to, afraid that this is the very decision that will tear it down.

*

"Raven," she hears, his voice static on the other end.

She's at her workstation, elbow against the table and fist pressing hard against her cheek. She's about to fall asleep when she hears his voice crackle to life. 

Startled, she jumps, peering around the cluttered room until she realises he's not there.

Plucking the radio from beside her, she sits, back straighter against her stool, as she clicks it on. "Shooter."

"It's working?"

Raven rolls her eyes. "Duh."

"You're a genius," he says, voice warm. She can imagine his smile, and she feels something blossom inside of her, blooming slowly like the flower at the very corner of her workstation is. She remembers he'd brought back a little bud when he'd been scouting. He'd doubted she'd ever be able to grow a plant, but Raven had been determined to prove him wrong.

"Tell me something I don't know, Bell." She thinks she can hear the smile in her own voice, despite knowing her lips have spread into an upward curve at the mere sound of his voice. Instantly, she knows he'll hear it. She bites back the corners, clearing her throat, and forces her lips into a thin line. "What's up?"

He's quiet for a moment. "Nothing."

"Where are you?"

"Outside."

"And you're radioing me because …"

"I wanted to see if it worked," he says. She waits for him to continue, knowing her question of _What worked?_ is evident in the pause. Her brows furrow as she presses her good foot against the rest she'd built into the stool. It's then she realises she's sitting on the chair she had built for him. "I'm outside camp. I wanted to see if the long range worked."

She narrows her eyes. "Okay …" She doesn't sound like she believes him.

There's a crackle of static on the other side. He's pressed his button down, as if he wants to speak, but she supposes he's changed his mind. "Just in case …"

She feels a hand press against her heart. Her voice comes out firmer, "In case of what?"

"You know." She thinks she can accurately picture his shrug. "I want to talk to you when I'm not there."

When he's scouting. When he's searching for Grounders. When he's looking for Clarke.

Raven remains silent, refusing to even acknowledge she's heard him with a press of the button on the radio she's created.

"Why do you care?" she says. She clears her throat after she hears how weak her own voice is. She doesn't think it to be desperate, but she thinks herself to sound winded. She should expect this crap from Bellamy. She should easily predict he'd try and tether them together whenever he can.

She doesn't want to know why. The fairytales she's trying to read through at his own behest to be a little wild, a little unpredictable, to enjoy herself by losing who she is in the ink, never include the details of how the prince falls in love with a princess he barely knows.

He pauses. "Raven …"

"Right." She snaps. She knows it isn't fair, but she can feel her fingers press against his shoulders and shove him away. She knows she's digging them so deeply into the sinew in the hope to either poison him or shatter his own bones. "I forgot you're someone who doesn't care."

She swipes at the radio, knocking it from the table. She wonders if it's as broken as her leg when it hits the ground.

*

When they leave, Raven remains in her workstation. There's a radio that's beyond her help in her grasp. She presses her screwdriver so sharply against one of its screws she cuts her own finger on its blunt point.

She thinks she knows the very moment that he walks over the threshold of Camp Jaha. It's the very second she feels most alone.

It's easier said than done when she tells herself she doesn't notice how her workstation becomes so quiet.

*

He's been gone for a week.

Not that Raven notices.

But he's been gone for a week before she hears the radio crackle to life and Bellamy's voice on the other side. "Raven," he says, the syllables of her name are broken up, as if he's repeating it over and over like some sort of mantra, hoping the damn radio catches some portion of it to gain her attention.

"Bellamy," she singsongs back to him. She'd been standing in her workstation by one of her boards, trying to solve a puzzle Wick doesn't even know the answer to. Without realising, she's moved toward her bench, sitting on the stool she had altered for him. She doesn't realise it until she leans her elbows on the table.

"You know Cerberus?"

She smiles. She hopes he doesn't hear it. "Yeah," she says. "You're a dork about him."

"I found him," he says, sounding as proud as a little kid would when discovering a trail of breadcrumbs that had been purposefully scattered on the ground. She remembers Finn's mother had done that for her when she'd been younger, leaving her a trail to follow on her birthday. "He's dead, but I found him."

Brow furrowing, she laughs, "What do you mean he's dead?"

"We had to kill him," he says. She imagines him shrugging his shoulders, like it's not a big deal he was involved in the slaughter of his favourite mythological creature. He doesn't sound particularly broken up about it, either. "He tried to attack us, but we found Hades."

"Are you okay?" she says, still smiling.

"Yeah." And she thinks he is, too. His voice sounds less tense, less rough and terse. Later, she'll wonder why she had been hoping with all her might he was smiling. "Yeah, yeah I am. We're coming back. There's nothing out here. Nothing in the bunker."

She hesitates in even asking it, but Raven does so, anyway. Maybe it's because he's far away from her and can't really read her like she's one of his stories. Maybe it's because she can blame anything he believes she has said on the radio cutting in and out. "Why are you talking to me about this?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

She lifts her shoulder. "Dunno," she says. But she does. Raven knows all the answers. She knows that that's why he finds her exasperating. She knows that's why he always asks her how to work a radio instead of Wick. She knows why she always tries to sit next to or opposite him when Monty and Jasper decide to host a feast like the ones they had in Mount Weather. "I guess I just find it funny I've been missing you being irritating lately."

"Aw," he says. She knows he's smiling. "I missed you being a pain in my ass."

She rolls her eyes. "Shut up."

"I have to go," he says. His voice begins to crackle in and out, worse than it had been before. "You need to fix this piece of —"

It goes dead, but Raven doesn't find that her heart is beating wildly in her chest out of fear for him.

*

She knows the radio has gone to shit with how his voice crackles in and out, the line going dead to only bring itself back to life within minutes or hours.

He acts like the days he spends travelling back to camp are only minutes in between. He acts like he's with her, beside her, rather than far away from her and out of her reach.

She suspects this as he begins, on a random whim, to recite a tale to her, one found in the books he'd brought back and dared her to try and read. 

His story is so butchered she's surprised he can even remember the section he's up to.

"So, these kids went into this house. Guess it was made out of bread or something," he says one day. 

A few hours later, the radio in her workstation crackles back to life as her back is turned to it, her hands preoccupied with a marker and her board. "The witch wanted to eat them, so she starved —"

It isn't until twelve hours later she hears the rest of it. "— A bone, pretending to be so thin she'd be turned off from eat —"

She can barely sleep when she hears: "— A furnace —"

It's two days she goes without the rest of the story. Her board becomes a map of the possibilities of where it could lead, from the two children dying in the furnace, the cottage going up in flames, the boy eating his way through the wall, the girl throwing the broom at the side of the house and running, and the old witch growing a vegetable garden outside of her home. She doesn't realise what she's done until she steps back and notes how her drawings and her notes for how to make a radio, how to make a bomb, how to create a better security system for Camp Jaha, has been replaced with story plot points.

She even dreams of it, of this house made of bread, of the old witch, sometimes taking the shapes and forms of women she has always loathed on the Ark, of herself and Bellamy taking on an old hag and devouring her cottage for days.

She thinks she hears him, in her dreams, but she knows that the radio stays quiet, dead, for hours on her workstation table.

And she finds she _is_ asleep when she hears him without static, voice loud, but soft at once, warm and calming. "They pushed her into the fire and ran away."

She rolls over and onto her side, blinking blearily up at him. He's crouching beside her cot, the biggest and dumbest grin on his face. His cheeks are smeared with dirt, his hair a mess, and she thinks his knuckles are coated with blood.

Like the boy who had been locked in a little prison inside of the old witch's house, she leans up and loops her arms around his neck, pulling him down, like he's the old crow in the tale. But she doesn't push him into the furnace to burn.

"I prefer your stupid stories about Greek heroes," she says. She tries her best not to laugh. She tries her best not to smile. But she fails in doing both. "They're more realistic."

Bellamy smiles, brows furrowing. He looks at her incredulously. "You think there's a house out there made of bread?"

"No," she says, shaking her head. It's only then she realises how close their faces are. She lets her eyes glide along the freckles dotting his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. "That's stupid." His smile doesn't fall, but she knows he's waiting, like he can sense she's not finished at all. Her fingers fiddle absently with the ends of his hair at the nape of his neck. 

Tilting her head up, she states, sounding matter-of-fact, "There's a three-headed dog out there waiting to be found."

"Oh," Bellamy mimics her pose, even though she notes how he doesn't bite back his smile at all.

"We'll find it," she says. "Without a radio in between."

*

Once upon a time, there was a girl with a broken leg, a boy who had lost his way, and a three-headed dog that hadn't existed at all.

But instead of remaining in her ivory tower, the girl with the broken leg had insisted the boy who had lost his way carry her down the stairs. She had requested he let the silver stars turn a deep red and guide him through the labyrinth of their fallen home to lay beneath the stars for her own story.

The grass is wet. There's no three-headed dog in sight to guard them, but she thinks she can spy him, up in the stars, watching over them even if his bark will never be heard by anyone but the two of them.

With her head against his shoulder, she begins, "And they all lived happily ever after."

"That's not how stories begin, Raven," he says, peering over at her with a smile.

"This is _my_ story, shooter," she says. She tilts her head to look up at him. "And it starts at the very end."

**Author's Note:**

> the two prompts i was inspired by:
> 
>  **Prompt 2:** "Bellamy/Raven and the times we never hear them talk on screen, but we saw them in the corner arm to arm, or walking together to the tent to figure out a plan to save everyone (“Let me show you what to look for”).
> 
>  **Prompt 3:** Bellamy is all along hopelessly in love with Raven (he is amazed by her, by everything she does, be it making a bomb or coming to him in his tent), but doesn’t say anything. Maybe because he isn’t sure what he feels, maybe because it isn’t the right time. Maybe because someone else comes along and he might think that Raven is happy (she’s not, though). He is there for her, nonetheless, whenever she needs him. Raven notices. 
> 
>  _“I am the cruelest kind of lover._  
>   A coward. Afraid of the thing most dazzling.”


End file.
